


the scene of the crime

by englishsummerrain



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Dubious Morality, M/M, Mild Blood, Non-Explicit Sex, alternate title: chenhyuck murder boyfriends, chenle has cat ears, choking if you squint and rotate your head 60 degrees to the side, very important
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:42:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25526128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/englishsummerrain/pseuds/englishsummerrain
Summary: Chenle is gorgeous in the way only violence can be — an art no-one would admit to admiring. There’s stripes of red on his cheeks and blue light that pools on the knobs of his spine, and when he tells Donghyuck to open his mouth and rests his fingers on his tongue he feels something primal surge inside of him.It’s like sticking your arm down the throat of a lion. Donghyuck has to admire anyone who has the guts to do that.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Zhong Chen Le
Comments: 25
Kudos: 103





	the scene of the crime

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes u just go insane and write 4.5k words of chenhyuck. today is that day.

Neo Seoul is a writhing beast. She twists and roars, she shakes the filth from her feet, she breathes with diseased lungs and cries with acid tears. Neo Seoul is a monster — an amalgamation stretching to the mountains and the seas, spilling over the border that once divided the peninsula. She’s a sea of blinking lights and pollution, radioactive waste buried under the earth and humans scurrying to stay alive. Highways that crisscross like electronic wires, traffic signals undergoing perpetual maintenance, half the villains on earth suckling at her teat and bleeding her dry.

For Donghyuck she’s home. He leans on the balcony of this apartment — a hundred floors up, high enough up that the air is clear to breathe and the buzz of the bazaar doesn’t quite reach him — and watches her fight. She’s a mess, a demon. A creature that should have been put out of her misery a long time ago. 

Donghyuck is one of those villains, too — part of the corruption no-one could ever root out. 

It’s why he’s here — why he loves Neo Seoul. She’s a terrible place for someone with morals, but Donghyuck worked out long ago that morals don’t get you very far. His are locked up in a safe somewhere — along with the last few vestiges of empathy he has to muster. 

That’s another thing that won’t get you far — having a big heart. Caring about anything that isn’t the amount of credits in your account and how you’ll survive the next day.

The light of the city reaches to the stars and were it not for the display beamed onto his irises it’d be impossible to tell what time it is. The light pollution is the same at every hour of the day, and it’s only for the blinking 00:55 am that Donghyuck knows he’ll have a new assignment soon. The jobs are plentiful here, coming through on an automatic cycle every six hours, and Donghyuck’s position as one of the best gives him a pick of the litter.

These days he doesn’t really do anything that doesn’t have a million cred payout minimum — which rules out most petty jobs. Things like intimidation or casing out a joint — getting back someone’s stolen PA, or deleting those naked photos off their competitors server. 

Donghyuck has graduated far beyond that. These days it’s murder.

A warm pair of arms wind their way around his waist and he freezes for a second, before remembering exactly where he is. Who’s in his apartment. 

“Whatcha doing,” Chenle murmurs. His breath is hot and wet against the shell of his ear and Donghyuck leans back into him, scanning the neon littered skyline for patrol cruisers. 

“Thought you were asleep,” Donghyuck says, avoiding the question. Chenle knows what he’s doing. They’re in the same line of work, after all. His fingers play at the hem of Donghyuck’s shirt and Donghyuck lets him slip them under and splay against his stomach. 

“C’mon, why would I be asleep?” Chenle asks. One of his fingers digs into Donghyuck’s skin and the other dips slightly lower, before Donghyuck catches his wrist and peels it away. 

“You sleep like the dead. Surprised you’re up at this time.”

“I had an inkling.” His voice is like a siren song, so fucking _dangerous_. There’s blood in that voice, blood that pools in his mouth and along the wet trail of his footsteps. A taste of iron in Donghyuck’s mouth as Chenle nuzzles along his neck.

“Stop trying to distract me,” Donghyuck says. He knows what this is. Chenle does too. He giggles, almost the picture of innocence, and pinches Donghyuck’s side.

Chenle’s good at what he does. That sweet childish smile, that open demeanor. He has a way of slipping past defences, of disarming those who sleep with a gun under their pillow. He finds the crack in their armour, and then he plunges straight through.

Donghyuck admires him. It’s part of what drew them together — a shared history of bloodshed and violence, of twisting the knife and scraping illicit credits from the marrow of someone’s bones. There’s an art in the way Chenle works people — just as there’s an art in the way Donghyuck kills. 

“You’re so mean,” Chenle says, but he hooks his chin over Donghyuck’s shoulder and slumps against him, an admission of defeat.

It’s part of the fun of it all. Chenle doesn’t even like killing — he likes the information game better, turning someone’s life to a sequence of code floating in front of his eyes — but he’ll kill Donghyuck’s target half the time just to piss Donghyuck off. 

  
  


*

  
  


It’s how they meet. Donghyuck cleaning his hands, Chenle fixing his collar in a bathroom lit in the shade of blood. A cordial nod to each other, a flash behind the eyes. Acknowledgement of something shared — a promise. Something thrown down and answered.

They end up in a hotel bed, a body in the bathtub, the stim fluid spread across their wrists glowing like the veins of raver on an early morning binge. One of the displays on the wall is broken and it spews forth multicoloured lights that flow across their skin, an acid trip of colours like an oil spill in a mountain spring. Pollution and corruption, Chenle’s eyes a blood moon. 

“You look so nice when you kill,” Chenle murmurs, nuzzling along Donghyuck’s neck. The sheets are silk and his skin is honey, touch sticking to Donghyuck's bare chest, kisses edged with teeth and the bite of a man who has nothing to lose. 

"If you're trying to talk dirty it's working," Donghyuck says. Chenle's teeth come out again — a nip to the jaw — and Donghyuck moans, heat sparking through him. 

He’s gorgeous in the way only violence can be — an art no-one would admit to admiring. There’s stripes of red on his cheeks and blue light that pools on the knobs of his spine, and when he tells Donghyuck to open his mouth and rests his fingers on his tongue he feels something primal surge inside of him. 

It’s like sticking your arm down the throat of a lion. Donghyuck has to admire anyone who has the guts to do that.

“Hold still,” Chenle murmurs. His shirt is on the floor but he’s still wearing his slacks — waistband slung low on his hips, lines of his ribs standing out. There’s a mod that glows neon running up his right side and the slightest definition of muscle throughout his chest — something powerful in the way he straddles Donghyuck’s torso. His fingers hook in Donghyuck’s cheek and he pulls his mouth open, smiling with a wickedness that seems sinister in the broken lighting. “Pretty,” he says. 

Donghyuck can’t retaliate — Chenle is still holding his tongue down — but he tries to communicate anyway. An upwards roll of his hips, his body arching towards Chenle. There’s a finesse in his touch, surgeon-like. Precise. He takes his hand out of Donghyuck’s mouth and cups his jaw — presses another kiss to his lips and drags his teeth down his cheek.

“So pretty.”

There’s something utterly hypnotising about him. Maybe it’s Donghyuck’s sheer fascination with death, maybe it’s the way he moves. The way he strips Donghyuck bare with just his eyes — and then does the same with his hands, unbuttoning his shirt, leaving wet fingerprints on the fabric.

The foreplay was slow — all wet kisses and drawn out touches, Chenle inspecting him like he was a product at a market. Donghyuck burning up, crawling with desire. The slick slide of his hand — kisses pressed to his hips. 

The sex is _not_ slow. Chenle breaks him in half — he folds him and fucks into him like it’s his last night on Earth — like everything is burning up in orbit around him. The bed frame shakes and there’s death in the air, and Donghyuck’s throat burns as he gasps and cries for more. Chenle’s hand wraps around his windpipe and there’s a piercing bolt of fear that runs him through when he realises Chenle could kill him in that moment — that his body is a weapon and Donghyuck is without armour. 

He doesn’t, of course. It’s part of the thrill. Part of the game. Stripping him bare, breaking him apart. Donghyuck comes with an ache in his teeth and Chenle bites into the muscle of his shoulder and all he wants is _more_.

  
  


*

  
  


There’s almost two years between then and there. Then Chenle had been a tightly wrapped mystery, a thousand secrets bound tight between the covers of a book. Now there's an openness to him. Donghyuck knows where he's from — the floating Shanghai metro. He knows that Chenle is actually his birth name — though he's held many other faces before this one. He knows how many languages he speaks, how he likes his caffeine (in a drink, not in pills like Donghyuck takes, not in injections like most of the population has it). He knows there's a fire that flows through his veins, that he can do a standing backflip, that he's never had a proper sleep schedule, that he knows how to fly a light class spaceship — though he never got his license. When he was a kid he dreamt of being a space pilot and he took his first trip up the space elevator when he was four. He gets motion sickness and he's allergic to most kinds of alien blood, so he wears micro gloves when he works. His fingerprints change every three weeks. His favourite drink is firestar juice and he knows how to play an electric piano but not a classical one. Before he had this job he used to sing in a bar in the bazaar, and that's where he met his plug. That's how he got into this.

Donghyuck knows Chenle can pin him down with his hands tied behind his back. He knows he can knock him to the floor blindfolded. He knows what he tastes like, what he sounds like. The way his eyes roll back when Donghyuck fingerfucks him against the wall of a fifty thousand credit an hour hotel room. He knows what he looks like coated in blood — he knows what he looks like wearing only a necklace of diamonds.

He knows things he can't put into words, and maybe that's the best part of it all. There's something intrinsic about the two of them and in this line of work that's so rare. They're something that shouldn't work, but they do — twin disasters colliding in the most brilliant light show the galaxy might ever see.

  
  


*

  
  


"Oh, I like this one," Chenle says. He's sitting on their bed, holding up his PA as he browses the catalogue of rental suits. He taps a button and it projects onto the holographic image of his body currently floating in the centre of Donghyuck's apartment.

"I don't," Donghyuck says. The cut is too classic — too boring. Chenle always seems to dress like that, like he just wants to look good and not drop jaws. Which is a shame, because he _can_ drop jaws. Something bright, something to accentuate the sharp curve of his waist. Adornments of jewels that cost more than half the population could dream. A flash of fire that licks up to his eyes, something to give the impression of a weapon held at your throat. Like Apollo with a bow, arrow nocked, pointed straight at whoever watched.

"I'm not the eye candy," Chenle says. Donghyuck sighs. He'd already picked out his wear — a long jacket made of fabric like crushed mother of pearl, a wrap of something sleek and sheer made to accentuate the length of his legs. Heels on his shoes, jewels belted across his waist. Donghyuck knows how to dress up — he's been doing this for a long time — it just frustrates him that Chenle doesn't seem to follow.

"I know, but it would be nice if you dressed up for once."

Chenle laughs, then shakes his PA. "Fine, you decide then?"

  
  


*

  
  


They float into the party like a cloud of vapour on the surface of the lake, the both of them glittering and shining. Chenle has temporary implants in — a set of opalesque lights sitting above his bared collarbones and a river of glitter falling from his eyes, creamy white cat ears that poke up from his hair like icebergs in the midnight ocean. Donghyuck does appreciate that while he can't dress he does know how to accessorise, and between the two of them they manage to fit right in — not too freakish, not too plain. Foxes among the hens.

"Upper floor," Chenle murmurs. "Second door from the left." His breath is hot against the shell of Donghyuck's ear and he presses a kiss to his neck for effect, causing the corner of his mouth to twitch up. His eyes follow the line of the curved banister, along the upper gallery of the oversized classic mansion, through the crowd of partygoers to one of dozens of plain brown doors.

"Why?"

"Only electronic door on the floor."

"Cute."

Chenle presses a kiss to Donghyuck's lips and they seperate, weaving through the throng of the crowd. Donghyuck's heels clatter against the marble floor and he slides into a seat at the bar, tapping at the holoscreen to order the kind of sugary cocktail that Chenle would absolutely despise. He can almost see him rolling his eyes in his head, and he smiles. Motivation. They both have their jobs to play.

He's three drinks and four hearts down by the time Chenle returns — sugar on his lips, a fleck of something dark on the pristine white fabric of his sleeves.

"That was messy," Chenle says. The implants under his collarbones are glowing seafoam blue and he looks like Poseidon's child, like he’d just walked from the waves. Shame then that Donghyuck knew he was a creature of war — born of deceit and a burning desire to achieve victory above all else.

"What happened to being infallible?" Donghyuck teases.

Chenle wraps a hand around his waist as he presses a deep kiss to his lips, raising his other hand to cup his jaw and hold him steady, showing off just how much of his tongue was in Donghyuck's mouth. Possessive. Greedy. A flame lit in Donghyuck's gut. Oh, he'd remember this later — everyone's eyes on him as he'd let out a little moan for effect.

"More fun this way," Chenle says when he releases him, patting his cheek and giving him a grin, his eyes sliding over the man perched in the chair beside Donghyuck, who’s regarding them with wide eyes. "You clear here?" he murmurs.

Donghyuck has the code for the kitchen barrier on the microchip in his wrist and he's broken a few hearts — as far as he's concerned, he's done. Whatever Chenle had done would come to fruition later. "Yeah, let's go."

  
  


*

  
  


It's a stupid easy job. All that hullabaloo for nothing. The target is rolling out of his mind in front of a neon fish tank, and as Donghyuck cuts his veins out and pulls the dead man's chip from his neck he almost feels bad for whatever was paying this much for this kind of job.

_Almost_.

The only language he speaks are credits. There’s no room for anything else. 

"Another dynasty in the dirt," Chenle says. His ears twitch and Donghyuck reaches up to flick the tip of one, earning a glare from him. "I can feel that."

"I know. They're cute, though. You should get them more often."

"I was considering getting permanents," he says. They're walking along a skyway, glittering lights surrounding them like embers falling in a wildfire. They're still in their finery and Donghyuck's wrap floats behind him like foam in the wake of a boat, pearlescent and shimmering. "What do you think?"

Donghyuck bites his lip. He does like the ears — on most people they look ridiculous, but Chenle has just the right degree of feline trickery in his smile to pull them off. "Do what makes you happy."

He's swept up in another kiss — and he can taste the iron on Chenle's tongue. "You make me happy."

Chenle presses him up against the glass and he digs his nails into his bare biceps, between the slashes in the fabric of his sleeves, marking him like he's something to be claimed. Like the whole world wouldn't know he belongs to Donghyuck by looking at the two of them. The glass is cool on his bare back and Donghyuck snarls, recalling the quirk of Chenle’s lips as he’d sweet talked his way into the back rooms of his house — how his hand had lingered on Donghyuck’s waist.

“Is that a suggestion?” Donghyuck asks. 

“It’s a threat.”

It's four hours back to Neo Seoul from the satellite city they're in, and maybe they should flee the scene of the crime — but maybe also Donghyuck just wants the follow up to the kiss Chenle had placed on his lips in the bar. Maybe it's worth it to jack into the love motel he pulls up on his HUD and pre-book a room for the night.

"Get one with a mirror on the roof," Chenle says, to which Donghyuck flips him off. Chenle pokes his tongue out and elbows him in the side, the jewels around his neck clattering like bullets in the chamber of an old fashioned gun.

  
  


*

  
  


The motel he picks boasts 360 displays and a king sized tub, but thankfully when Donghyuck pulls Chenle through the mag-locked doorway the screens aren't set to mirror — instead they show the clear surface of a lake, a few ducks floating through the water, reeds blowing in the breeze. A pretty vista — one he’s sure he’ll never actually see. It might not even exist anymore, to be honest.

It doesn’t fucking matter. There’s a possessiveness in Donghyuck’s gut, the surge in his muscles that comes with a soul stolen. The door closes with a hiss of the locks and he captures Chenle’s mouth with his own, fisting the lapels of his jacket in his hands. 

It’s always the best when it’s like this. Donghyuck isn’t base enough to say that killing makes him horny (it doesn’t — it’s figuring out the puzzle that does), but he is base enough to say there’s a high in his veins when it comes to a done job. When it comes to the way Chenle’s eyes shine when he watches him work. The two of them together at a party like this, all eyes on them. Donghyuck’s dress hadn’t even been unusual — he hadn’t looked his best — but he’d still felt the gaze of so many people on him.

“You’re so fucking hot,” Chenle says, digging his fingers into the muscles of Donghyuck’s ass, pressing biting kisses to his mouth. “I wish you could see the way they stare at you.”

“I know what it looks like,” Donghyuck says. Chenle might have weaponised his youthfulness — his cheery smiles and the sunshine in his cheeks — but Donghyuck knows a thing or two about abusing a pretty face, too. They all look at him like he’s something innocent — something to be taken.

He likes that. Makes it easier to slip the knife between their ribs — easier to carve out their secrets.

There’s heat corkscrewing all through him, sparks exploding in his mouth. Chenle’s kisses are like a brand against him and Donghyuck wants to melt — he wants to be turned inside out and fucked until Chenle is all that he can remember.

Chenle chuckles, backing him up until his legs hit the mattress — until they’re crashing together. Fingers scrambling to pull off clothes, kisses with too much teeth. A tangle of limbs and bodies and the two of them rutting against each other, a firestorm, a bolt of lightning forking as it crashes to the earth.

He thinks this is the best thing about him and Chenle. The wild glint in his eyes, the curve of his smile. There’s glitter flowing across his skin and something alien in his blood and his cat ears twitch and he takes Donghyuck apart — he strips him down and pins him to the bed, kissing him, touching him, wrapping his hand around him and dragging all the moans he can from Donghyuck’s lungs. His teeth are like the point of a blade against his throat and Donghyuck arches into him, gasping his name.

Sometimes they play games — cat and mouse. Sometimes Donghyuck pins Chenle to the floor and teases him until he's begging. Sometimes he’s immobilised, the prettiest little thing for Donghyuck to play with. An apex predator in the jaws of a trap.

There’s no place for those games here. This is raw, this is wild. Chenle works Donghyuck open, thumbing at a bruise on the inside of his thigh. 

“Seriously Donghyuck,” he says. “You are so fucking hot. Unreal.”

Heat flashes through his gut, something white hot, something that explodes all through him. Chenle twists his fingers, pressing inside of him just right, and Donghyuck’s thighs shake, his head falling back and hitting the mattress. He can’t look at him anymore — he can only give in. “Holy fuck,” he says. “Chenle. Fuck. I need you.”

“Need what?” 

It’s a question. A challenge. Something more. Gunpowder on the fire. A bomb detonated at the bottom of the ocean, heat rushing to the surface in a great roar. It comes out of Donghyuck as a moan, carried as Chenle presses his fingers into him. 

“ _You_.”

He tastes iron — iron and _stardust_ — something like sparks, like swallowing a lit firecracker. Chenle is desperate too — his touch is frantic, the way he pushes Donghyuck up the bed is frantic. Every press of his fingertips into his scarred and bruised skin feels like it might just break straight through and he’s teetering dangerously close to the edge — spinning wildly like a racecar wheel on an axis. 

There’s no moment of truth, no staring into each other’s eyes as Chenle pushes into him. Just something visceral, just a surging heat. Chenle bows over him and kisses him and he doesn’t just taste blood — he can see it. Smeared across his wrist, droplets pooling on his collarbone. There’s a cut above his heart and a bracelet of bruises on his bicep — the shape of Donghyuck’s hand, gripping him too hard as he’d bent him over and fucked him a few days before. He glows and sparkles and Donghyuck would let him ruin him — he’d burn up like a satellite re-entering the atmosphere — just to have him like over and over. Tattoo his name onto his heart, feel the splinter of his bones beneath his fingers. 

Chenle kisses him and kisses him, wet, hot, panting, gasping. His hips piston into him and Donghyuck claws at his back — begging him to go faster. Faster, faster, it’s never enough. Chenle’s hand on him, his hand in his hair, his body folded in half. He wants to never forget this — he wants to live in his moment forever. His heartbeat thuds in his ears and his lungs burn and he’s _alive_ , he’s alive in this hotel bed with the blood of a hundred lives smeared across his skin. There’s a murderer in his bed and Donghyuck kisses him — and it’s the best drug in the world as it all punches into him. 

A searing white light, knocking him clean through. He throws his head back and moans Chenle’s name, arching into him, losing himself, falling off the edge and letting it all go. Every part of his body is alight and Donghyuck feels his orgasm tear through him, hot iron pressed against his skin, something that would burn otherwise but here just spurs him on. Chenle milks him until there’s nothing left — biting at the hollow of his throat, telling Donghyuck how good he feels. 

Donghyuck knows. He’s always known. To be able to have Chenle like this — to make him feel like this. To clutch his back as he falls apart, his shoulder blades crisscrossed with the tracks of Donghyuck’s nails. It’s a rare privilege. Chenle collapses on top of him, mouthing wet kisses onto his face until his breath has evened out. 

“You taste like blood,” Donghyuck says. Chenle’s hand is sticky where it presses into his cheek.

“I bit the inside of my mouth,” he says, then groans. “Fuck. Let me clean you up.”

His ears twitch as he wanders into the ensuite, coming back with wipes and cleaning off the fluid pooled on Donghyuck's stomach. He dabs at the cut on his chest and tosses them into the incinerator, before curling up beside Donghyuck again. “You paid for the whole night, right?”

Donghyuck nods. “Yeah. Figured you’d want a good night’s sleep.”

“You know me so well.”

“My sleepy kitty.”

Chenle laughs. There’s a boyishness in it — bright. On the displays around them the stars have come out across the lake, and they fan out behind Chenle’s head, matching the glitter on his cheeks — all the mods that wink and hum beneath his skin. Donghyuck scratches behind one of his cat ears and he lets out a sigh. 

“Very sleepy,” he says. “Big day.”

“Mmm. Sleep now. Tell me where that cut’s from tomorrow.”

“What cut?” Chenle asks. His eyes are drooping and his fists are already uncurling. Donghyuck knows he has about five minutes to stake his claim on his side of the bed before Chenle starts to starfish out

“On your chest.”

“Oh. Got into a fight with a chef. Wanted some moon crabs…” he trails off with a sigh, shutting his eyes and mumbling his next words. “Will you get me moon crabs?”

Donghyuck would get him the fucking _moon_ — but he doesn’t tell Chenle that. “Of course,” he says.

“You really are so sexy when you kill, you know that?”

“Now you’re delirious. Go to sleep.”

Neo Seoul’s destruction, the knife in her side — sleeping in a hotel bed, surrounded by artificial stars. Donghyuck presses a kiss to Chenle’s forehead and worms down under the sheets. Tiredness pulls at his limbs, tempered by the satisfaction of another job well done. The post-orgasmic glow, a dull ache deep inside him. 

Donghyuck curls his fingers in the fabric of the sheets and it’s another twist of the blade. Blood he won’t ever wash off. The only way he ever wants to be.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter ](https://twitter.com/dongrenle)and [cc.](https://curiouscat.me/goldhorn)


End file.
